The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 148

Chapter 148: 148 | How Fast is Fast, Lukas?

"From the progressive manifestation."

I nodded. The cover story we’d agreed on. Everything I gained from the System fell under the umbrella of an evolving Aspect that continued developing past initial activation. It was the truth the way a photograph of a building is the truth about what’s inside it.

Diane’s hands slid from my knees up to my thighs. Not far. Just enough to shift the contact from concerned to something adjacent to concerned. Her fingers pressed into the muscle through the thin sweatpant fabric.

"How much stronger, specifically?"

"Enough that I need somewhere without walls to practice."

"The nearest open space large enough to contain whatever you just did to my gym is the athletic field behind the community center on Ninth."

"That’s three miles away."

"Then you’ll run there. Good cardio."

She was already problem-solving. The CEO underneath the lace had clocked the situation and started generating logistics before the woman underneath the CEO had finished assessing whether I was physically intact. Both versions existed simultaneously. Both were real. Both were looking at me with an expression I couldn’t fully decode even with eighty Intelligence.

"I should fix this before Sloane comes down for training," I said.

Diane looked at the ceiling hole. The dead bag. The twin craters in the drywall.

"How do you plan to explain the damage?"

"Aspect training got out of hand. New kinetic output function manifested unexpectedly. I panicked and overcommitted on a strike."

Diane’s left eyebrow rose half an inch. "That is almost believable."

"I had a really good teacher."

She didn’t smile. She did something worse. She looked at me like she was recalculating my value, and whatever number she arrived at made her pupils dilate fractionally in a way that Read the Room couldn’t have intended for me to notice but eighty Intelligence caught anyway.

"You’re going to patch the drywall."

"Obviously."

"You’re going to replace the bag."

"Tomorrow."

"Today. Because it is already tomorrow." She glanced at the clock on the wall. One-fourteen AM. "You are going to order a replacement bag from the sporting goods store on Fifth that opens at seven, and you are going to have it delivered before noon, and you are going to reinstall the ceiling mount using proper lag bolts into the actual beam this time rather than the secondary plate, which I will note was the original contractor’s fault and not yours."

"Yes ma’am."

"Don’t call me ma’am."

The command came out automatic. The same voice she used on clients who tried to negotiate after the deal was closed. But her fingers tightened on my thighs when she said it, and the robe had given up pretending it was doing its job. The whole left side had slipped to her elbow. Her lace bra sat against her body like it had been designed specifically to ruin concentration.

The panties visible between her parted knees caught a sliver of the dim overhead light and I could see the lace pattern clearly enough to count the stitches if I wanted to, which I did not want to do because thinking about counting stitches on Diane Fitzgerald’s underwear at one in the morning while she knelt in front of me with her hands on my thighs was the kind of thought that created additional problems.

I looked at her face instead. The blue eyes watching me. The warm pink hair falling across one shoulder. The particular quality of stillness that meant she was thinking about something she hadn’t decided to say yet.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify